y planes dropping bombs, and the
searchlights shooting all over the sky--wouldn't he think he was among
thirty-third degree devils in some exclusive circle of hell? Sure he
would! And yet everything he saw would be natural--just as natural as
all this is, once we get the answer to it. Not that we're Fijians, of
course, but the principle is the same."

The Norseman considered this; nodded gravely.

"_Ja!_" he answered at last. "And at least we can fight. That is why
I have turned to Thor of the battles, _Ja!_ And _one_ have I hope in for
mine Helma--the white maiden. Since I have turned to the old gods it
has been made clear to me that I shall slay Lugur and that the _Heks_,
the evil witch Yolara, shall also die. But I would talk with the white
maiden."

"All right," said Larry, "but just don't be afraid of what you don't
understand. There's another thing"--he hesitated, nervously--"there's
another thing that may startle you a bit when we meet up with
Lakla--her--er--frogs!"

"Like the frog-woman we saw on the wall?" asked Olaf.

"Yes," went on Larry, rapidly. "It's this way--I figure that the
frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they're a bit different
too. Well, Lakla's got a lot of 'em trained. Carry spears and clubs
and all that junk--just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the
circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that,
Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets--armadillos and snakes and
rabbits, kangaroos and elephants and tigers."

Remembering how the frog-woman had stuck in Larry's mind from the
outset, I wondered whether all this was not more to convince himself
than Olaf.

"Why, I remember a nice girl in Paris who had four pet pythons--" he
went on.

But I listened no more, for now I was sure of my surmise. The road had
begun to thrust itself through high-flung, sharply pinnacled masses
and rounded outcroppings of rock on which clung patches of the amber
moss.

The trees had utterly vanished, and studding the moss-carpeted plains
were only clumps of a willowy shrub from which hung, like grapes,
clusters of white waxen blooms. The light too had changed; gone were
the dancing, sparkling atoms and the silver had faded to a soft,
almost ashen greyness. Ahead of us marched a rampart of coppery cliffs
rising, like all these mountainous walls we had seen, into the
immensities of haze. Something long drifting in my subconsciousness
turned to startled realization. The s